Solon’s face was haggard. “I was nineteen when I learned. You were barely sixteen. I tried to reassure your mother that the mages were telling the truth. She thought I was threatening her. You were young and I didn’t want to poison you against her by telling you. I had an offer for more training at Sho’cendi, so I took it. I wrote to you every week, and when you never responded, I sent a friend to deliver a letter personally. He was thrown out of your family’s estate and told you were betrothed and you never wanted to hear from me again.”

“I was never betrothed,” Kaede said.

“Which I didn’t find out until later. I was going to come home then, but a prophet told me I had two paths before me: ‘Storm-riving, storm-riding, by your word—or silence—a brother king lies dead,’ if I came home, I would kill my brother; if, on the other hand, I went to Cenaria, I might save the south from Khalidor.”

“So did you?” Kaede asked.

“What?”

“Did you save the world?” Her tone had an edge of deep anger.

“No,” Solon said. He swallowed. “I hid that I was a mage from a man who was like a brother to me, a man who would have become king. When he found out, he dismissed me. The next day, he was killed by an assassin I could have stopped had I been there.”

“So you come home like a whipped dog looking for scraps.”

Solon gave Kaede a gentle look, seeing pain under her anger. “I came home to make things right. I have no idea what happened here. No Sethi on the mainland will talk about it.”

“You took the wrong fork of the prophecy,” Kaede said. “You should have killed him.”

“What?”